Wolfram duRhys can never live up to his father’s legend, his mother’s expectations, or the role of crown prince.When someone tries to kill him, he flees. Trying to keep the demon within him at bay.He sets out on an unplanned journey, with a cousin he doesn’t trust, into a kingdom supposedly at war. What he finds is a river with no water. A temple to the stars. And a princess. More hazardous than even the demon within.The Eunuch’s Heir, Elaine Isaac’s sequel to The Singer’s Crown, is a wild, haphazard journey with a hundred threads, all hanging in suspense for the final 150 pages of unraveling. Plenty of action, fantasy-world development, and danger. And more than one encounter with a ferocious wild cat. But I especially appreciated the relationship between Wolfram and his father. Note: The Eunuch’s Heir features a separate main character and a different generation than The Singer’s Crown, but I would recommend reading The Singer’s Crown first, both because it is a good read and because it lays much of the groundwork for the second novel.
The only reason I read this is that I promised the author I would. I wanted to like it, and there is nothing wrong with the story or writing--I'm sure many other people would enjoy this--but it is entirely the wrong book for me. It is filled with lies, secrets, and betrayal, and the only character I really liked in her world dies. As I generally avoid reading any book that has the word betrayal on the cover, you can see why this distressed me. Worse, while I certainly felt sympathy for the main character and was satisfied with the ending, I did not like him nor want to spend time with him. It was hard reading when the lies just went on and on and on and supposedly good people kept doing the wrong things for stupid reasons--over and over and over. AAaaarrrggghhh!
